


Reminders

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Phil Needs a Hug, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 13:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6612568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the "Declarations of Love When One of Them Is Hurt" space on my C/C Trope Bingo card. Phil can hold steady when Clint is hurt. He can, and he and Clint knew from the beginning that they had to just take what they could get. Clint's changing the rules on them, though, and holding steady is hard when the rules change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reminders

As Clint’s flimsy cough tapers off, Phil wipes blood from his lips with a handkerchief and swallows his panic. He’s practiced in swallowing panic about Clint, but it tastes sharp and sour in his mouth today. Clint trembles a little in Phil’s grip, but the bright sun that pounds against Phil’s back makes Clint’s eyes sparkle when he pries them open against the pain.

“How far out?” he whispers, and his voice is as flimsy as his cough.

Phil brushes damp, darkened hair off of Clint’s forehead. “About twenty,” he answers, and takes some solace in his ability to _sound_ steady, _stay_ steady, _seem_ steady.

“Not –“ Clint swallows thickly and closes his eyes for a moment and then tries again. “Not soon enough.”

“Maybe soon enough,” Phil retorts quickly.

He’s got Clint pulled into his lap, his legs stretched out around Clint’s body, and he has one hand pressed hard against the small hole that the last bullet fired made in Clint’s chest. There’s a body only about a foot from Phil right now, a young HYDRA agent with blond hair and wide open green eyes vacant in death. Phil runs his free hand down the side of Clint’s cheek and doesn’t let himself look at it.

Clint coughs again and his body goes rigid with pain as Phil feels more blood seep under his hand. This. This is why it was a bad idea from the start.

_“It’s going to end in a bad way,” he’d whispered to Clint as Clint pulled back from the warm kiss he’d pressed to Phil’s lips after they caught their breath. They were lying in Clint’s bed, where they both finally gave into the hot desire that had been building for years. Clint’s body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and Phil’s hair was messy and he might have been a little out of breath. He was thrumming, with afterglow and with fear, because this – this could only end in a bad way._

_Clint pulled back from Phil immediately and rolled over to the other side of the bed, away from Phil. He curled in on himself and said, “Sorry. I thought you wanted this.”_

_Phil could’ve used that moment to cut it off. He could have taken the out and let Clint go, but he saw rejection in Clint’s eyes, and it darkened them in a way Phil had never seen before. Phil wouldn’t leave it like this. He couldn’t._

_“No, I mean, one of us is going to end up dead, Clint. It’s going to end badly.”_

_And Clint, with his characteristic enthusiasm, rolled back toward Phil and grinned. “So we take what we can get until one of us kicks it,” he said, as if it were easy._

_And it was, usually. Sometimes they had to remind each other to take what they could get, but they did, for three years._

Now it’s ending in a bad way.

Phil stares at his blood-covered hand and notices the dark circles splashed under Clint’s eyes as he lays in Phil’s lap. His breaths are shallow, and there’s still blood on his lips. “Clint,” Phil says, and he leans a little closer to Clint’s face. “I’m gonna get Nick to put you on desk duty for two months when we get back.”

Clint manages to open his eyes and furrow his brow despite the pain. He licks his lips and manages, “Nick loves when I’m on desk duty.”

“Yeah, but that’s only because you sneak up to his office and play poker on your lunch break. He actually hates everything else about you and desk duty.”

“You’re the one who bought me a new Nerf gun for my last birthday,” Clint answers, before another cough wracks his frame.

Phil holds him through it and wipes his mouth again. Now Clint’s panting. “Hey,” Phil says. “Slow down, okay? Just breathe with my counts. In for one, two, and out for one, two.”

Clint closes his eyes and follows Phil as best he can, and after a minute, his breathing is better. “Fuck,” he says.

Phil holds him steady, manages to stay steady. He has to. “You don’t have to take the Nerf gun to work, though,” he says.

Steady.

Clint looks at him again and swallows. “I have a reputation to keep.” He pauses and grips Phil’s hand a little tighter. “We don’t talk much about us,” he whispers, and Phil feels the conversation shift, tilt, and careen toward the edge of a cliff.

“No, we don’t,” he replies, “But that’s okay. We both just take what we can get, right?”

Clint stiffens in Phil’s lap for a moment, a wave of pain washing through. And then Clint says, “I have rings.”

Phil figures he didn’t hear him right, so he leans closer, brushing his hand down Clint’s clammy cheek again. “What?”

Clint turns his head to the side before looking back at Phil with a hard look. “I have rings. At home. In my sock drawer.”

Phil feels his world tip, thinks maybe there’s a crack in reality. Surely he misheard. “Rings?”

Clint’s eyes soften and he tries for a smile, that smile that warms Phil to his toes even here, in a dusty overgrown parking lot seventy miles from the nearest town in Colorado.

“I – there are rings in my drawer, so if I die here and you find them, well. One’s for you,” Clint whispers. 

Phil’s brain goes blank for a second before he chokes out, “But you’ve never even said –“

Clint cuts him off. “Neither have you,” he says, and then another cough tears through him.

This time it’s worse, and he’s writhing in Phil’s arms. Phil’s hand comes off of the wound and it’s slick with blood, and when Clint finally stops coughing the blood from his mouth is dripping down his cheek and he’s limp against Phil’s legs. Phil checks for a pulse and bites his lip to bleeding until he feels it, sluggish under his fingers. Clint’s out cold, and Phil whispers, “I love you. I love you,” twice before he comes back to himself and presses his hand to the bullet hole again.

Clint’s eyes flutter open and he blinks slowly up at Phil and Phil leans over again and presses a kiss to Clint’s forehead.

“I’ll wear your ring,” he says to Clint, and keeps his voice steady, steady, steady.

“Take what you can get,” Clint whispers, and smiles around his pain.

Phil hears a helicopter in the distance and fights to keep his hope and breathing steady. “You’re not going to kick it today, Clint. Our ride’s here,” he says with his own grin.

Phil wipes blood from Clint’s mouth one more time and Clint closes his eyes and replies, “I’ll take it.”

Phil hovers until the airlift lands at the SHIELD base and Clint is whisked away to surgery, and as soon as he gets the word that Clint’s going to pull through, he goes home, showers and eats, and then makes his way back to the hospital wing.

When Clint wakes up, there’s a purple and yellow Nerf gun and two small ring boxes sitting on his bedside tray waiting for him.

Phil’s more than ready to take what he can get.

 

 


End file.
